As is known, in the field of knitting, the expression “intarsia design” designates a design that is composed of regions of different colors or made with mutually different yarns that do not have floating threads on the reverse side, i.e., threads linking the regions on a same row of knitting provided by means of a same thread, and do not have thread cuts at the ends of each portion of row that composes a region of the design.
Intarsia designs are currently produced either with straight machines or with circular machines having a small diameter, i.e., circular hosiery knitting machines.
Rectilinear machines inherently have a distinctly lower productivity than circular machines, while small-diameter circular machines can be used almost exclusively to produce hosiery items.
With currently commercially available double-bed medium- and large-diameter circular machines it is possible to produce Jacquard designs, i.e., designs without floating threads, in which the inactive threads are tied on the reverse side of the knitted fabric. Jacquard designs lead to a different result with respect to intarsia designs both as regards the aesthetic appearance and as regards the structure of the fabric, which among other things is necessarily thicker.